ROY OSBORNE REACHES VALKARIA
Andy had fallen into the habit of strolling up the sandy road each
evening about the time for the Lake Worth Express to go south. But not
once did he catch the sound of the warning whistle or the grinding
brakes. Even the Friday night train went by without slackening speed,
and the boy was almost ready to abandon hope that Roy Osborne might
come to his rescue.
“The automobile races were ended this afternoon,” said Andy when he
returned to the house after a vain visit to the box-car depot Friday
evening. “If he don’t come to-morrow evening, I’ll give up.”
Although neither Andy nor Captain Anderson talked much about the new
aeroplane this evening, the machine being practically complete, they
could not resist making it the subject of some comment.
“It don’t look very strong to me,” remarked Mrs. Anderson. “Where do
you hitch on the wings?”
In explaining that the wings were the two planes, Andy grew verbose
and was soon expatiating, for the first time, on the magnificent
possibilities of the apparatus.
“Then you let it up with a rope,” suggested Mrs. Anderson, upon whom,
to tell the truth, a good part of Andy’s technical talk was wasted.
Both Andy and Captain Anderson laughed.
“I wish we could,” exclaimed the captain, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to
sail it without a rope. It works just like a boat――but in the air,” he
explained.
“But who guides it?” persisted his wife.
“Who? Why, there must be an operator. I supposed you knew that――”
“I knew that much about it,” interrupted Mrs. Leighton, with a half
patronizing smile. “I’ve just been waiting for Andrew to offer to do
it.”
There was an awkward silence. The captain puckered his lips, and Andy
grew white about the mouth. Someone had to say something.
“And what if I did?” said the boy, at last, his fingers gripped and his
breath partly suppressed.
“Have you been counting on doing this?” asked his mother, sitting
upright and leaning toward the distressed boy.
“N――no,” stammered Andy. “But there is no one else.”
Mrs. Leighton turned toward Captain Anderson:
“Do you want him to do this, Captain?” she asked, her voice indicating
that this situation had been long anticipated.
“No,” exclaimed the captain. “_I_ don’t want him to do it. Of course,
it is more than dangerous.”
“You know you said you’d find someone,” continued Mrs. Leighton, who
was visibly under a strain.
“I haven’t found anyone yet,” replied the captain, somewhat crestfallen.
Mrs. Leighton was silent a few moments.
“Captain,” she said at last, “whenever, in your judgment, Andrew can be
of further use to you in this experiment, he may do as you wish. If you
think he ought to attempt to operate this aeroplane, I feel that I must
defer to your judgment――”
The captain was on his feet in an instant, shaking his head.
“We should have thought of all this before we began and saved all our
trouble and expense,” he exclaimed. “It’s too late to mend that, but it
isn’t too late to prevent the boy breaking his neck. I don’t recommend
that he turn aviator――I don’t even believe I’ll consent to it.”
Any hope that Andy had that his mother might approve of his undertaking
to operate the car, was dead. The boy arose and left the room. He
choked back a sob and wiped away a few tears that he could not
suppress, and then walked far out on the pier and sat in the moonlight
alone and sadder than he had ever been in his life.
When he finally entered the boathouse to go to bed, he found Captain
Anderson already asleep. The boy wondered if his friend and co-worker
did not feel something of the same disappointment. In the morning Andy
was awakened by a noise in the shop, and he turned over to find Captain
Anderson opening the big double doors.
“Turn out, youngster, and give me a hand. I want to get the car out so
I can fasten on the rudder.”
“I suppose you’re goin’ to take a photograph of it,” said Andy, with a
sad smile, “and then knock her to pieces. It would make a fine rack to
dry clothes on――”
“I’m goin’ to test her out if it’s the last thing I do alive,” said the
captain in a determined voice.
“You?” exclaimed Andy, rolling out of bed. “You? Not if I can stop you,
you won’t. You’re sure to kill yourself.”
“What about you?” replied his companion.
“Oh, I――well, that’s different. I always wanted to. And you’re doin’ it
just because――because you’re mad.”
“Never mind why I’m doing it,” went on the captain. “You get dressed
and get busy.”
Without daring to make further protests, the boy complied. At the
earliest moment, however, he went into the house and almost immediately
Mrs. Anderson appeared with a skillet in her hand. Rushing down the
path to the boathouse, she cried:
“Charles Anderson, you’ll do no such thing.”
Her husband, already bolting on the bird-tail rudder frame, looked up
in surprise.
“Do you mean to tell me you think you’re goin’ sailin’ off in the sky
in that thing?”
“I haven’t told you anything of the sort,” answered the captain
somewhat meekly.
“Well, are you?”
“I――I――”
“You are not! That’s all there is to that. It’s bad enough to come down
here and live half the year doing nothing and seeing nothing while
you fritter away your time building boats you don’t want, and nobody
wants, I guess. But you mark what I say, I ain’t goin’ to go mopin’
around in black the rest o’ my life pretending you weren’t crazy when
you committed suicide. And if you don’t tell me this minute you’ll stay
down on the ground, I’ll smash every stick in this fool killer.”
“I――I――” began the captain again.
As he hesitated, his irate wife sprang forward with her skillet in the
air. The fragile varnished spruce stanchions were at her mercy.
“I promise,” capitulated her husband. “I won’t try it.”
“Then you come right in to breakfast,” exclaimed Mrs. Anderson. “And if
you want my advice, you’ll put a match to that whole contraption and
try to get back to your senses again. You, too, Andrew,” she said hotly
as she passed the alarmed lad. “You’re both clean crazy.”
Despite this domestic conflict, Captain Anderson and Andy could not
resist a surreptitious glance now and again and a covert smile. But
Mrs. Anderson was in earnest, and the old-time silence about the new
aeroplane was resumed at the breakfast table.
“Othello’s occupation’s gone,” said Captain Anderson in a low voice as
he and the boy left the house.
“He _may_ come to-night,” almost whispered Andy, referring to Roy
Osborne. “Hadn’t we better go ahead?”
Captain Anderson nodded his head toward the kitchen, where Mrs.
Anderson could be heard making far more than ordinary kitchen clatter.
“Nothing to-day,” he said, with a smile. “Mrs. Anderson is the
easiest-going woman in the world. But, when she breaks out as she did
to-day, I don’t want to cross her. We’ll put the car back into the
shop, and――well, we might try a sail until the storm is over.”
“There’s someone out already,” remarked the almost disconsolate boy,
pointing toward a speck of sail far down the river.
Captain Anderson looked and led the way to the boathouse. Unbolting the
part of the rudder frame he had already attached, he and Andy carried
the light frame into the shop.
“Something like a pallbearer,” remarked the captain. “Maybe our sail
will cheer us up.”
Before he left the shop, he took down his binoculars, and had a squint
up and down the river.
“Looks like Lars Nilsen’s _Frieda_ from St. Sebastian,” commented the
captain, indicating the boat in sight.
Ten minutes later the man and the boy had rowed out to the anchored
_Valkaria_, and were hoisting the sail, when Captain Anderson noticed
that the boat in the river had come about and was making for his pier.
“It is Nilsen,” said the captain, “and he’s comin’ in. Hang on to the
mooring till we see what he wants.”
As the _Frieda_ approached the pier, it could be seen that, besides
the man sailing the boat, a young man was aboard. By his side, in the
stern, lay a traveling bag. The passenger had a smooth but somewhat
tanned face, and he wore a stiff-brimmed light-colored soft hat such as
are common in the far west.
Captain Anderson sang out a greeting to the skipper of the little
craft and, the moment its nose touched the pier, the young man, bag in
hand, sprang on the dock.
Andy’s heart thumped with a sudden thought. He dropped the mooring
line, and the _Valkaria_ drifted dockward.
“Is this Captain Anderson?” called the young man.
As the captain replied, the stranger continued:
“Then this is Andy Leighton!”
“It is,” shouted Andy, “and you’re Roy Osborne!”
“One guess did it,” exclaimed the youth. “I’m a little late, but we had
a great sail. I got your letter――came down last night, but got carried
to St. Sebastian and stayed all night with Mr. Nilsen――came up in the
_Frieda_――dandy boat――how’s the airship?”
“I hardly thought you’d come,” began Andy, embarrassed.
“It was sort of accidental,” replied the new arrival, as he shook hands
all around. “I was to go back to Newark yesterday, but when I showed
Mr. Atkinson your letter, he said I might come. I’m to join him at Lake
Worth to-morrow.”
“To-morrow?” exclaimed Andy. “Do you have to go so soon?”
“Mr. Atkinson thought it wouldn’t take long. I didn’t just understand.
How did you ever happen to get an aeroplane down here?”
As the party started up the pier, Andy began his explanation. Without
going to the house, the group went at once to the boat shed. Within
five minutes, Roy Osborne, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, was
again the expert aviator. Swiftly he went over the newly wrought car,
examined every detail of the bird-tail rudder and then asked Andy to
operate it. Then he did the same thing himself.
“What do you think of it?” asked Andy with barely concealed anxiety.
“An adaptation of Renaud’s idea,” answered the young professional.
“Renaud?” repeated Andy. “I don’t believe my uncle ever heard of him or
his idea.”
“Quite likely,” answered Osborne, “but it is a most ingenious
application of the Frenchman’s theory. It has never before been
applied,” he went on.
“Will it work?” exclaimed Andy.
“Mechanically, it looks good to me. But there is only one way to find
whether it is a practical improvement――try it!”
“Will you?” urged Andy.
“Let me see the engine,” was the youthful aviator’s answer.
Here was something Andy understood. Almost before Roy Osborne reached
the delicate motor, Andy had primed it, set his ignition, and, much to
his relief, had the cylinders softly singing with the unbroken purr of
the perfect engine.
The sight of the aeroplane had not moved the new arrival. But at the
sound of the engine, he sprang forward, and then stood amazed. The next
instant, his hands, big and sinewy for his age, were on the cylinders
as if caressing them. His eyes glistened. Then his strong hands caught
one end of the throbbing mechanism and raised it partly from the floor.
“Have you got the patterns for that?” he exclaimed quickly.
“There are none,” answered Andy. “My uncle made it――he’s dead.”
Osborne stopped and started the engine.
“I’ll give $10,000 for it and the right to make it,” he added, after
another moment.
Andy gasped; even Captain Anderson’s mouth dropped open.
“How――how about the new rudder,” Andy managed to say, at last.
“I don’t know about that, yet. But I do know about this. Will you sell
it?”
Andy was confused; he hesitated, with no definite thought.
“Show Andy how to operate our aeroplane, if it’ll go,” put in Captain
Anderson, “and I reckon we can trade.”
Osborne turned to the excited, trembling Andy.
“Is it a go?” he asked with a smile.
“If you can make our aeroplane fly,” answered Andy, his face almost
white with joyous emotion, “and’ll teach me how to do it, you can have
anything I’ve got.”